


without rhyme or reason

by compact



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Amnesia, Angst, Aphrodisiacs, Catatonia, Confusion, Dissociation, Drugged Sex, Gang Rape, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Instability, Mind Control, Mind Rape, Mind/Mood Altering Substances, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Porn With Plot, Possession, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Rape Aftermath, Sexual Slavery, Stockholm Syndrome, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 00:20:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6261694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/compact/pseuds/compact
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Starkiller is destroyed, Hux disappears, and Kylo learns that some things, once broken, might never be repaired.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Kylo - 1

**Author's Note:**

> If you read all those tags/warnings and still clicked read, well, I don't know what to say, I guess we're both going straight to hell after this. 
> 
> This is a story where bad things happen to bad people. Specifically, Snoke happens to Hux, who then happens to Kylo. Nothing bad really happens to Snoke, even though he is the worst of all.

When Hux disappeared in the aftermath of Starkiller’s destruction, Kylo didn’t react. In fact, he spent so many days in recovery he didn’t even know Hux was gone until hours after his release from the medical bay. It was only through passive observation that he came to suspect the truth. It was with an inappropriate amount of alarm that he realized, as he strode through the halls of the Finalizer once more, that Hux’s usually grating voice was absent from the speakers.

When the sound of another early-morning announcement echoed through the corridors, Kylo made his way to the bridge for the first time in a fortnight. With mounting dread, Kylo continued forward, never once breaking stride even as he glanced up at the speakers from behind his helmet. This time, there was an unfamiliar female voice making the proud speeches that had once been part of Hux's domain. 

 

-

 

The person standing at the ship’s helm was not General Hux.

The woman standing where Hux had always stood turned to face Kylo at his approach. Kylo took in the woman's shrewd brown eyes, staring out at him from beneath a familiarly cut cap, and the thin, cruel line of a mouth that cut across an unremarkable face.

“Who are you?” He said, his hand twitching once next to his lightsaber.

“General Leaine,” she replied curtly, and her voice was the same as that which had filled the hallways. “I am the new commander of this ship. It is an honor to meet you, my Lord.”

The commander of the Finalizer was supposed to be Hux, Kylo thought dumbly. Then, he remembered Starkiller, the hot burn of erupting lava and the bitter bite of the wind, the crumbling chasms that had opened before him. The very real possibility of Hux’s death suddenly stood at the front of his mind, and his heart seized with a terror he had no right to feel.

His mask and cloak hid his reaction from his audience, though the silence that ensued stretched on for too long to not be revealing.

“Congratulations on your promotion,” Kylo said stiffly, when he remembered to react. Around them, the officers on the bridge carried on as normal, and Kylo didn't dare to look too closely, in case no familiar faces remained.

“Thank you, my Lord,” the general said. “Was there anything I could help you with?”

She was too polite, Kylo noted absently, and too short, her hair too brown and her voice too high. This was wrong. All of it.

He didn't run when he fled.

 

-

 

Demoted, was what Kylo learnt later, after he made the necessary rounds, making his presence known once more on the ship. Hux had been demoted and reassigned, found at fault for the loss of the First Order’s greatest weapon. It was his negligence, they said, that led to the girl’s escape, and allowed the Resistance agents to disable their shields. It had been his tactical ineptitude, they claimed, that had allowed a handful of Resistance pilots to destroy their most powerful weapon despite the legion army of the First Order.

 _Scapegoat_ , said the politically astute. _Failure_ , said the devout.

 _Good riddance_ , thought Kylo, taking all of his jittery anxiety and writing it off as relief. There would no longer be anyone around to challenge him, to distract him, no one around who might provoke the most violent urges within him, or amuse him with every disgruntled frown and glare. Kylo’s thoughts drifted to Hux, to his fierce green eyes and plump lips, again and again.

This reaction was normal when someone, whose presence you’ve grown accustomed to, disappeared without a trace, Kylo told himself. He didn’t particularly care, he thought.

No matter the reason, Hux was gone now, and that was all there was to it.

Kylo didn’t get to dwell on anything for long. It was only hours later that the command came from their leader. He was to depart the Finalizer. His training would soon be complete.

 

-

 

In the cold, exhausting blur of his training, Hux became lost to Kylo completely. For long periods, Kylo was left alone within his own mind, deprived of sensation and set adrift in the ocean of his thoughts. He swam, sank, and found alongside fresh-formed memories, moments buried so deep he had forgotten they lingered. Then, without word or warning, Snoke would be there in his mind, and Kylo laid himself bare, prostrating himself at his master’s feet, ready to be judged and weighed, reshaped into who he was meant to be. His master showed him the truth, and it was with his guidance that Kylo walked down the path toward darkness, toward unimaginable power.

The warmth of his mother’s arms became the cold, heavy weight of a pillory. The momentary thrill that came in the moment his lightsaber pierced his father’s chest transformed into victory, replayed and magnified until it filled him with light and laughter. The scent and taste of his enemies’ blood, rich and decadent as the finest wine. Ginger hair and green eyes, lips and fingertips trailing against his skin, arousal, pleasure, release.

In the darkness, Kylo Ren was remade.

 

-

 

When Kylo Ren returned to the First Order, he knew that he would not be defeated, ever again.

He didn’t need to re-enter the ordered chaos of the Finalizer to understand his change, but to see the scope of his new power brought into perspective in the presence of the mundane, came with it a pleasant rush he could not deny the truth of. Kylo felt it stronger than he ever has before, the Force, wound into the fabric of reality itself, thrumming, waiting. He needed only to touch his simmering, latent rage, his hatred and lust, and with it his senses sharpened and grew, the bright energy of each living soul aboard the ship flaring like a thousand shining beacons. He could feel everything, everyone, touch their minds and tear them apart if he so desired.

The promised power of the dark side, Kylo decided, as he tore through Resistance bases in the hunt for Skywalker, was every bit as sweet as promised. They made no progress, and his frustration transformed into bloodlust. Corpses accumulated at his feet, the meager offerings to his grandfather’s legacy.

Snoke’s presence lingered at the back of his mind, a pleasant and steady hum of approval.

 

-

 

He saw flashes, sometimes, in the eternal night of space, of a face better forgotten. Each time it appeared, Kylo hastily buried the image, wishing it had been reduced to nothing, or to something as simple as blood and rage in the lost days of his training.

 _Demoted_ , he thought at other times, when facing the new general with her too polite demeanor and too brown hair and a voice that was entirely the wrong pitch and tone. _Reassigned._

 _Careful, Ren_ , whispered a familiar voice, low and dangerous with hollow threat.

 

-

 

Precisely one hundred days after his training was completed, and precisely one year following the collapse of Starkiller, Snoke summoned Kylo Ren to the Finalizer's audience chamber.

It was something that had occurred a thousand times before, and on that day, Kylo had expected the usual exchange. There would be a new ‘diplomatic’ mission, one that would end in blood or in peace as he saw fit. Despite the loss of their weapon, the blow they had dealt to the Republic was a fatal one. The First Order’s power was expanding, yet the Resistance still remained, the stubborn and irritating thorn in their side that seemed impossible to remove. Yet with time, Kylo knew they too would be vanquished. Clad in his cloak and helmet, Kylo crossed the expanse with his head proud, his steps confident, and the sight of the Supreme Leader sitting majestic in his throne brought nothing but reassurance and comfort.

This was the last time he would feel this way about his master.

“I hear your mission has been a success,” Snoke said, scratching at Kylo’s mind. Reflexively, Kylo opens himself, replaying the memories of his latest mission, how the Duros scientist had begged for mercy as Kylo slowly picked off his children. How he had finally broken in the face of his youngest, and handed over the plans they had desired. Snoke’s pleasure was a warm tide, filling Kylo steadily until his entire body buzzed with warmth.

“You have done well, my apprentice,” Snoke said, and Kylo forced himself not to grin at the expected praise.

“I have another task for you.”

“Anything you command, Supreme Leader,” Kylo stared up at Snoke, expectant, excited for whatever was to come next.

“The time has come for you to act on your infatuation with Hux.”

Kylo blinked, his blood cooling rapidly into ice as the name brought back thoughts and memories he had all but willingly forgotten.

“I have no interest in our former general, Supreme Leader,” he replied, first instincts pushing him into denial.

“Your fantasies reveal otherwise, Kylo.”

Behind his helmet, Kylo’s face burned. There were no secrets between him and Snoke, his master having long since scoured his mind for every thought and musing. What Snoke said was true, but Kylo saw no purpose in acknowledging what he had once felt toward the man. Hux was belligerent, arrogant, and different from him in every way. He was also irritatingly fascinating, but his discourtesies ensured that Kylo would have no desire to act on his curiosity. Kylo could never lower himself into begging for the affection of a man such as Hux.

Kylo dwelled on all of his reluctance, presenting those thoughts to his master with all the bitter vehemence of a long-held grudge.

“Then it should please you, apprentice, that those things will no longer be a concern.”

Kylo stilled, uncomprehending. His confusion only grew when a piece of the metal wall slowly slid open beside him, living energy spilled from the crevice into Kylo’s consciousness. A cloaked figure was revealed in the darkness.

“He will be my gift to you, apprentice.”

The moment of recognition hit Kylo with wild, unrestrained delight, which flared hot and then sputtered, when his mind attempted to make sense of what was in front of him. Hux, for it had to be him, stood unmoving, head-bowed, and all Kylo could see was the sharp jut of his chin, and strands of orange hair from the bottom of the dark fabric that hung over his head and shrouded his body.  

Confused, curious, Kylo tentatively brushed against Hux’s consciousness – and slipped into a milky haze of nothingness. There was nothing there, no memory, no feeling, no thought, no _Hux_. The wrongness of it was suffocating, and Kylo stumbled in his rush to withdraw himself from the hollowness. His breaths, when he fully returned to the present, came too fast, and his heart raced in his chest as understanding formed. A cold pit opened in the depths of his stomach.

He had seen this before, had done this before, himself, when he tore through another’s mind too carelessly and too furiously, had seen fit to grasp every memory and thought that made a man whole and ripped it away.

“In light of the severity of his failings, I could not allow the former general to go unpunished.”

Kylo heard Snoke’s words through a haze, as though it came from a long way away. Why would Snoke do this to Hux? What could possibly be his purpose?

“This creature is now yours, use him however you see fit.”

Kylo stood, staring. He was trembling, and his arm grazed his lightsaber, tucked in its holster. This _thing_ wasn’t Hux anymore, it was only a shell, devoid of anything that had made Hux who he was.  Not his brilliance, the fire in his eyes, the curve of his smirk that had made Kylo’s heart flip in his chest.

“Why?” was the only word he could manage. Why turn Hux into this empty vessel? Why present him to Kylo, like this? Why this talk of Kylo’s interest in a man that clearly no longer existed?

“The answer to that, my apprentice, is your final test.”


	2. Kylo - 2

The entire way back to his quarters, the man, Hux, the not-Hux, followed Kylo in silence, his steps soundless against the durasteel. He was a nagging, ghostly presence Kylo didn’t know what to do with. And as Kylo powered through the corridors, intent on returning to that sole place on the entire ship he sometimes dared to think of as ‘sanctuary’, he fought to quiet the roiling mass of feelings inside.

He didn’t want this, he had never wanted this. Yet even as the thought formed he knew it was a lie. He had wanted Hux for so long he was ashamed by it, had wanted him ever since he first eyes on the young Colonel, the rising star of the First Order, seven long years ago. And his desire had only grown with each new exchange, blossoming into something unwanted and unnecessary by the time he came to know Hux’s sharp mind and even sharper tongue.

Kylo had always wanted Hux, he was allowed admit that now.

But not like this.

The occasional soldier walked past them, and Kylo could sense the curious attention everywhere he walked. None ever dared to look too closely at the Master of the Knights of Ren, yet Kylo didn’t fail to meet every harried glance with a full, withering glare. The alarm and panic of those below him only added fuel to his fuming thoughts.

Kylo was still angry, confused, and uncertain about everything that might be to come when the door slid shut behind them in his quarters. When he looked toward Hux for the first time since in the chamber, Kylo almost expected the former general to pull off his cloak and throw it over his arm, the action complete with an acerbic comment about the state of Kylo’s room.

But Hux simply stood there, unmoving, head bowed, in a perfect replication of his stance in the audience chamber. Kylo remembered the emptiness, the hazy fog he had seen in Hux’s mind, and pulled off his helmet, slamming it onto its stand.

The light in Kylo’s quarters was perpetually set at fifty percent, enough to see by, but not enough to reveal too much of the emptiness. The new quarters they provided him upon his return was too big, assigned to reflect his status rather than his taste. Accordingly, Kylo's living space was barren but for a single cot, a chair, and a table for his meals. His books were his single indulgence, piled in precarious towers in a dark corner with scattered tomes spilling out across the room. Another indulgence, by gift instead of his own design, were the giant panels of transparisteel that curved along the outer wall. Unlike the other walls, which were scarred with burns and dents, this wall remained clear and unmarked. As Kylo and Hux stood, face-to-face for the first time in 365 days, the endless dark of the cosmos stretched beside them, with all its glimmering promise of discovery and death.

Kylo stared at Hux, waiting, wondering.

“Take off your cloak.”

He didn’t know if Hux would obey, or if he’d become less than that now, nothing but a doll to be posed and played with as Kylo desired. But he wanted, needed, to see his face, if just to confirm that this was truly the same man, that there was truly nothing left of the person Hux used to be.

Then, a pale arm emerged from within the cloth, and Kylo stared as the cloak was pulled over the man’s head in a swirl of black fabric.

Underneath, Hux was completely naked.

Kylo inhaled a ragged breath, turning away the instant the fact registered in his mind. Yet the sight of pale flesh was burned into his memory. Snoke had said this was a test, had brought Kylo’s desires carelessly and suddenly to light, and all of it meant that Kylo’s lust was part of this, part of why. He only needed to uncover what his master intended, that was all there was to it, all that there needed to be.

Hux stood there, silent, without presence, until Kylo finally dared to look again.

It was him, Hux, the same man Kylo once knew. Hux’s body was sickly skinny, the kind that only came with prolonged starvation, and Kylo could count each one of his ribs for how starkly they stood out beneath his withered skin. His hair, also, was longer, and fell loosely around his face in a way the general never would have permitted had he still held command of the ship. His eyes were the same green, framed by those translucent lashes Kylo had once stared at from behind his helmet. Yet they held none of Hux’s spark, and stared dully forward, blank, unfocused.

 

-

 

The irony was this.

In Kylo’s fevered dreams, his visions, his fantasies, he had seen Hux, on his knees for him, had felt the sweetness of those lips as they took in his cock, inch by agonizing inch. He’d reveled in the broken sounds that he’d wrenched from that mouth when he thrust himself deeper, the wet tears that had gathered at the bottom of those gorgeous eyes and then overflowed. He’d tangled his fingers into those thick locks and _pulled_ , drinking in the way Hux’s throat was forced to work harder, for him, to be better used like the pretty whore he was always meant to be.

In his fantasies, in his training, Kylo had used and enjoyed Hux a hundred different ways.

 

-

 

For too long, Kylo simply watched Hux, waiting for a sign of life behind those painfully familiar green eyes that he knew wouldn’t come. Then, his gaze drifted to the black fabric pooled at the other man’s feet. Kylo stepped closer, and crouched to pick up the fabric. Hux didn’t so much as twitch as Kylo entered into his personal space. He merely stood, suspended, staring vacantly ahead as Kylo pulled the cloak back around his shoulders.

Simply shoving clothes into Hux’s arms, it turned out, was pointless. Kylo pulled shirts and trousers from his wardrobe, tried it once, and watched as Hux merely swayed at the impact, and let the clothing fall to the ground.

Kylo ground his teeth as he glared at the pile, subduing another wave of frustration before he took the time to think, studying Hux’s impassive face.

“Pick up the clothes and put them on.”

Almost instantly, Hux pulled off the cloak, revealing again his emaciated frame, and Kylo watched numbly as he bent and picked up the pair of trousers. Hux prepared the piece of clothing and stepped into it, pulling it up around his narrow waist. The moment he let go, it fell, and again when Hux tried a second time, and again the third time until Kylo told him to stop.

“Just put the shirt on.”

Kylo’s black shirt, he found, as he watched Hux’s mechanical movements with the beginnings of hysteria bubbling up inside his chest, was big enough to swallow Hux whole. The fabric hung off Hux’s thin shoulders, and barely reached past his thighs. Finally, Hux pulled the cloak back into his hands, and stood there, seemingly uncertain about what to do with it.

It wasn’t until his lungs started to burn that Kylo realized he had stopped breathing. He forced himself to exhale, then took a ragged breath as he reminded himself that yes, this was happening. This was happening.

“Drape it over the chair.”

Hux crossed the floor, and did exactly that before stopping and returning to that terrifying stillness. Kylo’s eyes followed him as he moved, and his thoughts drifted to his lightsaber, and the quick, simple death it would offer.

“Come here.”

Obedient was never a word Kylo would have associated with Hux before, at least when it came to the orders Kylo had attempted to give. Hux had wielded his glare like a dagger, reminding him time again of his place _outside_ of the First Order’s formal structure. _You have no authority to give me direct commands_ , he’d said, and he had been right. They worked together, however poorly, and it had somehow worked, until the meddling Resistance destroyed anything that might have come of their acquaintance, and Snoke had destroyed Hux himself.

Now, Hux approached him with quiet, steady steps, feet bare against the cold floor. He stopped barely arm’s length away, eyes downcast, and Kylo forced himself to ignore the sense of wrongness, the overwhelming unreality of seeing Hux like this before him, passive, hollow.

“Look at me.”

Hux’s gaze travelled up, and when they met Kylo’s, they were just as vacant as he remembered. Did they see him? Kylo wondered, feeling cold. Or was Kylo’s face and figure as meaningless as his table or his chair? In a moment of weakness, driven by habit, or perhaps despair, he almost dipped into Hux’s mind a second time. But he didn’t want to experience it again, that hollow emptiness, that loneliness so complete and pure that existence seemed no longer like a natural state of being.

Hux didn’t look like himself, like this, his hair long, and his expression so empty. Yet even now, he was still beautiful, and it was a beauty that was delicate, fragile, as though Hux was but a glass figure that could be easily shattered with a wrong touch.

Snoke’s reconditioning had wiped away his coldness, his determination, and the hard edges that had made him unapproachable, undefilable. It would be easy, now, to take what he wanted. This was a scene out of his most private fantasies, Hux standing here, all but naked before him. Kylo could, he would have, if not for the disgust that had settled so deeply inside of him, the awareness that this _creature_ was nothing but a perversion of what had truly mattered.

This thing in front of Kylo now wasn’t Hux, not really, even if it was the same body, the same vessel that had once contained one of the most remarkable people Kylo had ever known. It was wrong, all of it. This thing wasn’t Hux anymore, it wasn’t even human, it shouldn’t be standing there, wearing his face and his body. It tarnished Hux’s memory, it diminished everything Hux had accomplished, everything he had once held proud. Kylo had never told him that, how he had admired Hux for everything he had done, despite Hux frustrating personality and his arrogance and the way Kylo’s thoughts constantly drifted back to him no matter where he was or what happened. There were so many things, so much he had never said.

Slowly, steadily, Kylo’s thoughts collapsed in on themselves, falling into confusing chaos. The next thing he knew, his lightsaber was in his hand, alive and buzzing with energy. He felt the Force around him, sensed the dim, yet terribly familiar life energy pulsing from the figure before him. The wrongness was all the more evident when he reached out to it, the place that had once held so many precious things now lost. It shouldn’t be allowed to exist anymore, he wouldn’t allow it.

He raised the weapon, and swung.

The lightsaber fell in a perfect arc, and then stopped, just short of grazing Hux’s skin. Kylo tried to push it down, harder, to make real his intentions. But his muscles froze in place, refusing to move an inch closer. Hux reacted to all of it with an empty gaze, the vivid red of Kylo’s lightsaber reflected in his eyes. Kylo’s rage built, desperation and frustration combining with something foreign, something he didn’t think he remembered and yet knew was guilt, into something burning hot and ugly in his chest. He couldn’t do it.

Kylo screamed, swirled, and hurled his lightsaber toward the wall.

The weapon hit the durasteel with a clang and then fell clattering to the ground, the red beam vanishing into darkness. Kylo turned away, beginning to pace, his chest heaving with each breath. He couldn’t do it. It wasn’t supposed to be this hard. But Hux’s blood would be on his hands. Yet why should that matter? Hux’s eyes would never open again. But he was already dead, gone, disappeared while Kylo was refusing to pay attention. He would never get him back. But he couldn’t kill him, he couldn’t do it.

This was Hux.

Would Hux pierce his own heart with Kylo’s weapon, if he asked it of him?

Kylo could ask. He was too terrified to ask.

Do with him what you want, Snoke had said, and the only thought that filled Kylo’s mind was that he didn’t want this, not Hux, not like this. What had his master intended for him? Was Kylo to embrace lust over… sentiment? Maybe he was meant to kill Hux all along, just like he had killed his father, to prove once and for all that he was immune to attachments? Kylo combed through his memories, trying to pinpoint a word, or a phrase, that might give him a clue.

Kylo sat, curled against the wall, facing a living statue of a man he once knew, and tried to find an answer.

He didn’t know what to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So those things you see in the tags? It might take a while to actually get there, just need to, uh, get some of this plot and angst out of the way. Then we'll have room for even more angst.

**Author's Note:**

> This is unbetaed, so feel free to give me a yell if any mistakes jump out at you. You can find me [here](http://compac-t.tumblr.com/) on tumblr.


End file.
